WASHINGTON — Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said Saturday that her work on the Supreme Court has “kept me going” through four bouts of cancer and that she is “on my way to being very well.”

Ginsburg disclosed on Aug. 23 that she had completed a three-week course of stereotactic ablative radiation therapy – a highly focused treatment that concentrates an intense dose of radiation on a tumor – after a malignancy was discovered on her pancreas.

It was the second treatment for cancer in nine months for the court’s oldest member and leader of its liberal wing. Ginsburg had a lobe of her left lung removed in December, and in past decades was treated for colon and pancreatic cancer. She broke ribs in a fall last November.

But before a worshipful crowd of what organizers said was more than 4,000 at the National Book Festival, she declared: “This audience can see that I am alive.”

Ginsburg was interviewed by NPR legal affairs reporter Nina Totenberg along with two women who have been working for years on her biography, Wendy Williams and Mary Hartnett.

Totenberg asked her directly about her health, and why she was not resting for the coming term in October rather than making public appearances.

“I will be prepared when the time comes,” she said.

“I love my job, it’s the best and hardest job I’ve ever had,” Ginsburg said. “It’s kept me going through four cancer bouts. Instead of concentrating on my aches and pains,” she concentrates on the work.

Still, Ginsburg has maintained an active schedule: She was working in her chambers in Washington on the afternoon she completed radiation treatment in New York, and made good on a scheduled two days of events in Buffalo, New York, earlier this week.

She will be introduced by former President Bill Clinton, who chose her for the Supreme Court, at a lecture event on Tuesday in Arkansas. Totenberg said registration list for lecture at the 18,000-seat Verizon Arena in North Little Rock is full, and there is a waiting list of thousands.

Still, Ginsburg’s health is a pressing topic. Williams said she and her co-author interviewed Ginsburg during her recent radiation treatment, and that she was “perfectly normal, but very tired.”

The radiation treatment at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York began Aug. 5, and no additional treatment is planned.

“The tumor was treated definitively and there is no evidence of disease elsewhere in the body,” the court’s spokeswoman said. “Justice Ginsburg will continue to have periodic blood tests and scans. No further treatment is needed at this time.”

Ginsburg is one of the oldest justices to serve on the Supreme Court, and her health is a constant matter of concern and speculation. Her inability to serve would provide President Trump with a chance to nominate a third conservative to the high court and shift it further to the right.

Ginsburg said in a speech in July that she would continue to serve as long as she felt up to the job.

“I was OK last term; I expect to be OK next term, and after that we’ll just have to see,” Ginsburg said July 24 at an appearance in Washington. According to the court’s statement, that event was after an abnormality was detected in a routine blood test.